Winter Is our Spring

The other day Los Angeles Times columnist Hector Tobar wrote a lovely piece on the beauty of the L.A. basin in wintertime, and what this time of year means to us natives. If you missed it, read it here. He really captured it: the joys of the clean air, the views, the snow on the San Gabriels, the ocean glinting off in the distance.

The one thing I want to add to Hector’s observations is to say that winter is our spring — so the joy that frozen New Englanders feel at seeing the first green of spring is the same joy I feel when the the first poppies appear. Which is now. And there’s something even more joyous about the poppies in our most urban areas, like this new crop wedged between the Pasadena Freeway and a battered chain-link fence at the York exit. I think this photo says a lot about life in L.A., and Pasadena, and why we natives love it so this time of year.